


Hideout

by Sholio



Category: The Punisher (TV 2017)
Genre: Blood Loss, Gen, On the Run, Stabbing, Whumptober
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-24
Updated: 2019-10-24
Packaged: 2021-01-02 05:30:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,827
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21156407
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sholio/pseuds/Sholio
Summary: Amy and Frank are on the run. Again. And Frank is hurt worse than he's willing to let on.





	Hideout

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Edonohana](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Edonohana/gifts).

It's not much even for a flophouse, just an old Airstream-type trailer in the middle of nowhere on the highway, with an old mattress on the floor. But Amy's slept in worse, and when Frank unlocks the door, she just looks around with a sigh -- her breath steams out in a cloud; god _damn,_ she misses Florida sometimes -- and drops her backpack on the sagging floor with a sigh. She thinks about making a joke (_you take me to the nicest places,_ something like that) but she's just ... _tired,_ tired of running, tired of both their messed-up pasts coming back to fuck with them again. She thought she had a good thing in Florida and now that's gone too.

"Take the bed," Frank grinds out. "I'll sleep in the truck. Keep watch." 

He's been driving in grim silence for hours, gazing ahead at the highway with a hundred-yard stare, one hand on the wheel and the other curled around his ribs on the side away from her, like he thinks she won't notice. She _knows_ one of those guys back there got him; she's just not sure if it was fist or knife, and it's clear that Frank has no intention of letting on that anything's wrong, even if he's standing a little crooked with one shoulder subtly leaned against the door's cracking frame.

"Frank," she says, exasperated.

He waves a hand at the trailer's kitchen, which is just as shitty as the rest of it, cheap cabinets and cracked countertops with water stains. "Some canned stuff there. Electric's not hooked up so the fridge doesn't work, but there's a propane tank and you can have heat and hot water if you go flip some switches back there."

"Frank, come on, I don't know how to do any of this -- where are you going?"

"Truck," he says shortly, and lurches down the steps and across the crackling, frozen grass to the big black monster of a truck that he's pulled around to the back side of the trailer.

To get here, they turned down a driveway off the highway that's nothing more than a set of ruts, and Frank got out of the truck halfway in and dragged some cut, dead brush to block it behind them -- the truck could blast through it easily, but it makes it look like the driveway is blocked and impassible. As far as safety goes, this is probably about as safe as it gets, at least if Frank hasn't let anyone attach his name to this place, and she's going to lay odds that he hasn't. She doubts if he owns it; it's probably been abandoned forever, from the look of it, or maybe he found a trailer somewhere and dragged it to the first middle-of-nowhere piece of land he could find.

Anyway, it's not like she has moral problems squatting in some random trailer. She's just so goddamn tired of this being her life, and equally tired of Frank not telling her anything. He's climbing into the truck now, slow and careful, like an old man, and that pisses her off even more. He _is_ hurt and he won't tell her, and -- just -- _Damn it, Frank, trust me a little,_ she wants to scream.

"You better not leave without me!" she yells after him instead.

Frank waves a hand at her and closes the door of the truck.

She waits a minute to see if he plans on driving off, but he doesn't start the engine, just leans back wearily in the seat and closes his eyes. Amy turns her back and pulls the door shut. Not that it matters much; it's just as cold inside the trailer as it is outside.

Anger helps keep her warm, at least. She stomps around the trailer with her hands tucked up her sleeves and tries to figure out what "switches" Frank was talking about. She finds the furnace and water heater, even figures out how to turn them on, but there's no satisfying _whoomph_ of gas coming on. She really doesn't _want_ to go ask Frank for help, but she pokes and prods everything in sight, and it's fucking _freezing,_ and she'd really rather not blow herself up because she's too proud to ask how things work. She saw a Youtube video one time of a propane tank blowing up and taking the whole trailer with it. Those suckers are dangerous.

So she lets herself out into the yard. Evening is coming on, the shadows of the trees growing long, which makes her realize it's going to be dark as hell inside the trailer soon, too.

"Frank!" She stands on tiptoe outside his stupidly huge truck and hammers on the window until Frank cranks it down.

"Yeah, what?" he rasps out, looking down at her.

She's taken off guard by how genuinely terrible he looks. She never really noticed on the drive, but she was sleeping half the time anyway. Now she can see the dark circles under his eyes, the grayish cast to his skin. There's really something wrong.

"Are you all right?" It slips out before she can really think about it.

He almost smiles, a slight tug at the corner of his mouth. "You come out here to ask me that?"

"No," she says, managing to get herself back on track. "I came out because I can't get the furnace to start. I _know_ I did all the turning-on things."

"You turn the propane tank on?"

Amy sighs, long and deep. At least Frank doesn't say it in a _You're stupid_ kind of way, more of a matter-of-fact way. Still, how the heck is she supposed to know these things? "Where is it?"

"Back there. White cylinder thing."

Amy stomps off, muttering to herself. It's right behind the trailer with big flame-warning stickers on it, and she nervously pokes at things until she figures out that there's a valve that screws open. Opening it causes an ominous hissing noise, and she scrambles back, but nothing blows up. When she goes back into the trailer, it's immediately obvious that it worked. Hot air is blowing out of the furnace, already making a difference in the small space.

"Thanks, Frank," she mutters. She turns around to close the door now that it actually _does_ make a difference if it's open or not -- and realizes for the first time that there's _blood_ on the doorframe, glistening crimson in the thin late-afternoon winter sunshine. Blood where Frank was leaning.

"I knew you were hurt worse than you're telling me," she mutters furiously, throwing the door open. "I _knew_ it." She storms over to the truck and bangs on the window again.

Frank doesn't answer. He looks asleep, head tilted against the window. But ... that was fresh blood, and now that she's looking for it, there's blood on the truck door too, almost invisible against the dark paint.

She wrenches it open. Frank stirs groggily. "Wha," he mumbles.

Amy gives him a shake. "Frank. Wake up." 

He tries to push her off in a fumbling kind of way, eyes still closed, and now she's getting really, truly scared. It's not like him to be like this, even if he was up all night; he usually comes awake instantly, she _knows_ that. And his heavy canvas docker coat is covering up whatever's wrong with him, but there's definitely blood on his hands and, _damn_ it, why didn't she ask more questions --

"Frank!" She yanks on him, and she's got the leverage of being on solid ground while he's in the truck seat, but still, she's not expecting him to just come down on top of her. He manages to sort of halfway catch himself, and she halfway catches him too, and somehow they don't both go down flat on the weedy, overgrown gravel. But he's clinging to her like it's taking all his strength just to stay upright, and it's taking all of _hers_ not to collapse under the combined weight of Frank and all the guns he's probably got on him.

"Whadya doing?" Frank manages, big hands gripped in her jacket.

"Keeping you from sitting out here and bleeding to death, apparently." She's so furious she's shaking -- and he's shaking too, long shudders wracking him as he holds onto her. She reaches around him and slams the truck door, then helps him across the gravel and frozen, long-unmowed lawn to the trailer door. The steps are almost too much; they have to take them one at a time, with Frank leaning against her. When they get inside, they both just stand there for a minute, and then his legs start to fold.

"Oh no you don't," she mutters, and steers him onto the mattress, where he collapses. Amy kneels beside him and pulls back the coat. His shirt is drenched with blood, and so is the lining of the coat. Blood goddamn everywhere.

"It's not as bad as it looks," he rasps, squinting at her. "Just need a minute --"

"Oh, what are you going to tell me, gut wounds always bleed a lot, it's no big deal?" She peels back his shirt, but can't figure out where he's hurt; there's too much blood. The knife might have gone right between his ribs. "Stay there!" she snaps, and gets up and goes looking for something to put water in.

She finds a plastic bowl under the sink. The water is mildly lukewarm and a little brownish, but it's better than nothing. There's almost nothing in the way of amenities, but she finds a dish towel in one of the cabinets that looks cleanish.

The sun is already gone behind the trees, the shadows growing deeper inside the trailer. She'd like to be looking for candles or a lamp or something, but instead she's gotta stop Frank Goddamn Castle from bleeding to death. Her life _sucks._

He's sitting up on the mattress, leaning against the wall, when she gets back with the water. "Really isn't as bad as it looks," he says, sounding a little better. His hand is pressed against his side, fingers clamped to the gory bare skin. Amy lays her phone next to them with the flashlight app switched on so she can see what she's doing; even though there's still some light outside, away from the windows it's not nearly enough for something like this.

"I don't think you're even _remotely_ an objective source of medical information. Let me look."

She washes away some of the blood. It's still really hard to tell, but she's starting to think maybe he's right; blood is continuing to seep from the cuts over his ribs, binding up in dark red clots, but she thinks over the ribs is all it is; the knife glanced off, leaving long shallow cuts that have cost him a lot of blood but maybe, just maybe, nothing else, as long as they don't get infected. Frank holds onto the edge of the mattress with a white-knuckled grip.

"I don't suppose you have any bandages in here, or anything ..."

"First aid kit in the truck."

"Oh, now you tell me."

She goes out into the gathering dark. It's so quiet she can hear a car approach on the highway, and she freezes, but it goes on by without slowing; she glimpses headlights strobing through the trees, which makes her think maybe they should be careful with lights while they're here.

The first-aid kit is out and open on the seat next to an ominous dark stain where Frank was sitting. She can only assume that he went out intending to doctor himself, which is, well, better than if he'd just intended to do _nothing_ and passed out in the seat. But _still._ She collects the kit and also, while she's at it, the flashlight and spare sheepskin coat that she knows Frank keeps behind the seat, and takes them back into the trailer.

Stepping inside from the bone-deep chill outdoors makes her realize how much warmer it is inside now. She locks the door and turns on the flashlight, and turns off her phone to save the battery.

Frank makes a token protest and then gives up and lets her clean and disinfect the gashes before inexpertly but firmly taping on a bandage. Blood starts to soak through immediately. She finds an Ace wrap and winds it around his ribs, then plants his hand on top of it.

"Now," she says, sitting back and flexing her blood-sticky hands. "You said something about food?"

*

It's genuinely warm in the trailer by the time she gets done heating some cans of stew in a dented tin saucepan. Frank directs her to a closet with blankets. She lays one over him and leaves the rest in a heap to figure out later. In addition to the somewhat brackish water from the trailer's tanks, there's bottled water in gallon jugs. She finds a box of tea and some chipped mugs, and although she's not that fond of tea, she thinks it's probably healthier than coffee, so she makes tea for both of them and gets Frank to drink that along with a couple mugs of water to replace the fluids he's lost.

It's pitch dark outside the trailer. She can't get over the depth of the darkness here, unrelieved by city lights. But inside, it's warm and almost, sort of, cozy. She sits on the floor beside Frank and eats a bowl of stew by the flashlight's glow.

"Sorry about all of this," Frank says suddenly, struggling to get up. Amy gives him a look. He's still wearing the blood-stiff shirt, with the jacket draped over it.

"Are you going somewhere?" she wants to know.

"I wasn't kiddin' about sleeping in the truck."

"If anyone shows up, we'll hear them, okay?" And how crazy is it that _she's_ the one arguing for, at the very least, a sane kind of paranoia, when she's been waking in a cold sweat every night for months, when she can't stop looking over her shoulder at the passing pedestrians on the street and at coffee shop tables -- when her haunting fear that people _would_ come after her was finally realized, and now she's in a shitty trailer in the woods with Frank Castle ...

... and she's weirdly _okay_ with it, is the truly crazy thing. She's more relaxed and less terrified than she ever managed to get in six months of living a supposedly normal life in Florida, and part of that is because there was something weirdly reassuring about finding out that yes, they really _are_ out to get you, and part of it is because even if Frank is laid out flat, half dead of a knife wound, and can barely stand up, she _still_ trusts him to protect her.

"Okay, fine," he says abruptly, dropping the argument, to her surprise. "But you get the mattress."

"Frank." She touches his arm as he starts to lever himself off it, onto the floor. "Don't. You need sleep as much as I do, and you're hurt, and it's a big mattress. I'll just sleep on the edge." She takes a breath and adds, forcing it out: "I trust you."

And she means a lot of things by that; perhaps the very least of them is what _he_ seems to mean, which is that somehow she's supposed to worry about sharing a mattress with a guy who's old enough to be her dad and has already proven himself trustworthy on _that_ particular level a dozen times over. She's not sure how much of what she's trying to say he actually hears, but he looks at her for a minute and then he just makes a tired noise and rolls over on his side.

After a minute he says, "If we're gonna stay in here, I need the M1 out of the truck."

Of course he does. So she gets to make another dash through the now complete darkness, fetches the rifle, and lays it down beside him on the floor. In the flashlight's beam, she prepares for bed, not doing anything more than taking off her shoes and her coat. It's warm enough in here now to be comfortable, and she turns down the heat and lays out more blankets and finally, as she rolls up burrito-style beside Frank on the mattress, she turns off the light.

"Lock the door?" he murmurs.

"Yeah, Frank. I locked the door."

And then there's silence. His breathing steadies. She hopes he gets some sleep and doesn't just lie awake all night, keeping watch.

As for her ... after all the sleepless nights she spent in Florida, here in this lousy trailer off the highway, she finds sleep dragging her down almost immediately. Because Frank is at her back, a bulwark against the dark, against the people who are after her. He won't let anything happen to her, and she knows it down to her bones.


End file.
